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September 10, 2009

seedling pots for an urban garden

we recently did some renovation in our backyard. we've always been weekend gardeners planting tomatoes and peppers and other veggies in planters every summer. this is the year, though, that my husband decided to get more serious about our gardening patch. he's now decided that he wants to try doing some farming all year round.

we definitely live in an urban environment - our neighborhood is mixed use with warehouses a stones throw away. we used to joke that hummingbirds and butterflies would make a pitstop in our yard flying from more vegetated areas.

[side note - is seems like we're not the only ones thinking urban gardening. i'm sure you already have heard - but check out the white house's new veggie patch.]

we try to have our backyard reflect our tastes and needs. so my husband built these fenced in vegetable areas. we have dogs and cats and so we wanted to be able to protect the plants from animal [and kid] invasions. he also set up a drip system that runs on a timer so that we can be as economical as possible with our water usage.

in the spirit of re-using we put our tomatoes and anaheim peppers in an old clawfoot tub that we rescued from a neighbor's remodel.

what a great idea i thought. if we are going to try and have carrots and onions and broccoli and fava beans and lettuce going throughout the winter starting from seed we'll have to start plants continually. i was trying to think of an easy, eco-friendly way to do this lo and behold ! here it is. we get the Sunday Times - why not turn it into our start pots?? She links to it in her post, but here are the blow by blow directions . i have saved a bunch of the plastic started pots you get from garden stores, but those eventually fall apart - and i personally hate the "bio-degradeable" brown started pots you can get. they always seem to crack and break and never seem to fully degrade. newspaper is the ticket!

when i emailed Clementine's Shoes to ask her if i could re-post her pictures she mentioned that she also knew that people used toilet paper rolls as starter pots too. indeed they do .

this is great...and timely. i've been toying with the idea of setting up some kind of small vegetable garden. small cemented space, more shade than sun, and an unskilled gardner...quite a challenge. but this is inspiration. just added this blog to my list. (thanks for the link...where have i been?)